This Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India wants to offer free coverage for over half a billion of its poorest citizen. The new insurance scheme — dubbed “Modicare” — will cover 100 million of the country’s lowest-income families (the bottom 40% bracket). Each will receive services equivalent to the sizeable sum of 500,000 rupees (roughly $6,900) per year to treat serious ailments.

The government heavily subsidises electricity prices, providing power to consumers at around 3 US cents a megawatt, compared with 16 cents in Cambodia. This is much less than the cost of production, which is around 8 or 9 cents. It costs the government around $350 million a year to subsidise the national grid.

The government seems to have deferred any move to raise electricity prices for fear of sparking protests and unrest, say some industry analysts. This has also raised fears that the government will continue to drag its feet on approving generation projects, as new plants would swell the subsidy bill further, increasing the budget deficit and straining public finances

The country requires more than 6,500 high school teachers between now and next March, along with over21,000 middle school teachers and more than 35,000 primary school teachers, according to a report by the National Education Policy Commission in its second report (covering April to October) submitted to the Union Parliament.The report pointed said that teacher-training programs at universities and colleges were unable to sufficiently fill the vacant seats in basic-education schools. The Education Ministry needed to seek ways to solve that problem, said the report.